MOS

Photo by Alan
This is the road we take every day over to the college....I stand corrected. Becky took this one.

Big (ish) sky

Another view of the beaver dam taken by Alan while mom was driving about 55

Road trip...detour

Beaver dam on Goldman Road

One of my favorite swamps

"Get offa my cloud"...these Canada geese are already pairing up and staking out territories

Westland/Hallmark and some happier cows

The animal abuse incidents at this plant have had and will continue to have, far-reaching and ugly effects on the animal livestock industry. When one business allows such transgressions everybody gets a black eye, whether deserved or not.

Thus I was simply tickled pink to find this story central in all the news feeds over the past few days. It puts a better face on agriculture and it is much more the true face than what the HSUS has been putting about about cattlemen and women. Cow water beds have actually been around for years, as have dozens of other kinds of mattresses for cows. A comfortable cow is a functional, productive cow. Thus it is not only kind to make them comfy, but profitable too. There is actually constant intense research done on which beds cows prefer and will use most, as they make more milk lying down than standing up.

We bed with straw (or right now, hay, since our straw guy is out)., but we do have thick rubber mats under some particular cows, which could be described as klutzy and need them. The cows love to be bedded and fluff their own straw up before lying down on it. Our oldest ever cow, Frieland RORAE Ann, who passed away on the farm at just shy of 21 years old, used to stare at me nights....I could feel her eyes just boring into me while I milked, until I ran over and bedded her stall. Then she would lie down with a contented sigh to chew her cud. We always get a big kick out of the way cows communicate with their peons (us). They have the stare of demand down to a science...and you know, after a couple or three decades of living so close to them, I usually can figure out just what they want from me.

Some of them also delight in eating their bedding, which is both hilarious and frustrating. For example old Beausoleil picks her bedding up on her hind leg so she can reach it easily and eats it that way. It is not that she is hungry, as I can toss a chunk of the same old hay up in her manger and she will push it away. It is just a habit she has and there is nothing I can do about it but laugh at her and stay out of the way of that waving leg when I am shaking out her bed.

No more excuses

For lame photography.....



Thank you...you know who you are but I don't know if you want to be unmasked here.


First attempt....it's raining so we are a little limited outdoors, but as soon as the sun shines... I have already been immortalized on television as this hooks up to it....much fun being had here.

Maple season explained

I have been wanting to photograph a wonderful sugar bush we drive through every day, but the road is dangerous and there is no place to pull off. then the boss called me in to see this on TV. This is Steve Savage, "our" maple guy who taps our woods (and lots of others too) and keeps us in sweet, golden syrup. If you have the speed, watch the video. It is pretty cool. If not, the text is pretty explanatory.

What is it with roads and birds anyhow?

Coming home from taking Beck to college, late (in more ways than one) this morning. There is a red truck on the other side of the road, partly off the road and partly in traffic. (We are talking busy state highway here, narrow as heck and cars are flying along at least fifty-five mph.)

The man, bearded like a singer in the Soggy Bottom Boys, (only his is real), and dressed perfectly for the part, gets out of the truck and begins to step out into the road. I slow down and wheel over the object of his interest, which is dead center (quite literally) in my lane.


The thing is what we up here in the Northeast call a partridge, which is more correctly known as a ruffed grouse. As I pass, the man steps into my lane and bends to pick the critter up. Winding out of sight, several curves ahead, I can still see him in my rearview mirror, trying to pry that bird off the pavement.


What's up with that I ask you? Nobody is that hungry.


Maybe he ties flies.....

****Update, Becky had the likely answer to this dilemma. The college has a taxidermy class and they often use reasonably intact road kill for practice subjects. This bird was pretty fresh so.....maybe....

Be careful what you wish for

Driving down to Cobleskill, nearly nine last night. Had to pick Becky up after a late class (when will that girl learn to drive?) Alan was riding along to keep me company and we were enjoying each other thoroughly. He is a nice boy and very aware that his eighteenth birthday is Friday...and that the world will change for him and us real soon. As we passed the spot where Beck and I saw the screech owl the other day, I calmly mentioned, "Gee, we haven't seen any owls tonight. Usually we see a couple."

Not three hundred yards down the road we saw one alright. boy did we see it! It swooped right across the grill of the car, almost over the hood. It was close enough that we instinctively cringed backward and stomped on the floor...me on the brake, him on empty floor mat and an imaginary clutch (he is used to his five speed truck). Despite the fraction of a second that we saw it and the gasp factor, I did get to see what it was. A barred owl, all fluff and stripes. It looked big as a turkey from where I was sitting. If it had extended one feather even an inch it would have touched the car. I like owls, but I will not ask so carelessly again.

Which do you prefer?

Fresh fish on ice?

Or really, really fresh fish under ice?

Yesterday hundreds of geese

Today thousands. This flock took long enough to fly past for Alan and me to stand discussing whether he had time to run inside for the camera. Enough to decide, well maybe. For him to run inside and get it. For me to take dozens of pictures. At least five or six minutes. At least a thousand geese. Probably many more than that.

The Season is in Full Swing

Sweet!

Reaching joy

Winter is prison. I don't care how beautiful it is, it makes me miserable. I get though it by feeding the birds, growing as many plants as I can fit in my windows, on my benches, anywhere I can put them, and by waiting.....

***do click***

For a day like this one. There is still snow, but it is perfect snow...loose granular is the skiers' term I think. It has a satisfyingly sloppy crunch underfoot. Fun to walk in. It is on its way out too, leaving us apace..... Every step you take will be a bare place tomorrow. Every dark thing has its own Easter basket nest too, melted by absorbing rays from a still hidden sun.





Birds are everywhere...avian surround sound.

There be robins. Maelstroms of geese, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds ringing everywhere. Red winged black birds and grackles, blue jays with cheeks so crammed with sunflower seeds that they look deformed when they fly. Thunderous clapping mourning doves...birds everywhere. One flock of Canadas went by this morning, sailing east down the river. I counted...slowly....very slowly...to thirty seconds worth and they were still coming, punctuated by silver gulls that were caught up in their beating flight path.




Because I was on a hill and they were not so very high over the water I was looking straight across at them and could see their wings throbbing, brown, then grey, then brown again, in flickering unison.


There is water everywhere too, rushing toward the river like it might miss it if it didn't hurry. The horse pasture pond is overflowing. As I sit on the old barrel I set here years ago, I can hear the excess softly burbling across the grass despite the racket from the Intersate. It is so clear that if it weren't for reflected light, you couldn't see it.




Can you see the water below?...



Even though it is still winter you can sense the springing up of outdoor things. It is easy to remember why lambs buck and caper and horses gallop and kick just for the fun of it. I feel downright frisky too.

Beginnings

We had a second baby yesterday..... out of Dreamroad Extreme Heather. Sadly he is the first bull calf she has ever had and isn't much bigger than a breadbox. We don't know what the heck to do with him. Anybody need a well-bred Jersey bull? Out of a former reserve champion Jersey, bred by a nationally known herd. By the bull Moment?

It's a girl

Meet Frieland E Cookie Crispy

That is not her mama checking her out but rather Consequence who is also due for a baby pretty soon. She stands next to Crunch, the new mother. Sire is Four-of-a-Kind Eland

And so it is done

Elliot Spitzer has resigned. I spent the morning listening to the news with one ear (no choice, the boss had it on) while writing the Farm Side. Deadline day and as usual I was right up against it. This week it is about the effect this scandal could have on agriculture in the state. The Farm Side BTW is a weekly column about farming (amazing huh?) in our great state. Farming is about as regulated as an industry can get so what happens in government greatly affects everything we do. A late state budget affects everyone who pays taxes. Budget deadline is April 1st. What are the odds that it will be done by then? How many heads of departments will roll under new leadership?

Time will tell how this all plays out, but I am glad at least one aspect is finished.

Just passing through

Snow is softly falling, but like a decade of beads on a rosary a javelin of Canada geese wings over,seeking true north and talking to the tundra.

Mackey Leading out of Safety

I thought that the Iditarod would probably be over when I got up this morning. It is not, but it won't be long now. Mackey is still in the lead going away from the Safety checkpoint, but Jeff King is hot on his heels. King has kept his team intact at 16 dogs through most of the race up until now, which is quite a handling feat, but now that they are on the ice he dropped two. Probably by the time we are done milking it will be history....a very exciting race this year and we much enjoyed it.


A few complaints about the new website though. Someone was looking to make money off race followers and if you were a non-paying customer the site was frustratingly hard to navigate. Lots of fascinating anecdotes to be read on the blogs, but when you wanted standings you had to click all over the place. In the end I missed the old stand-alone Cabela's site. The official site when it was stand alone was a pain in the neck and the new one seems to fit that description as well. I expect by next year they will work the bugs out, but if they don't I will use the newspapers for info.

More on the Westland/Hallmark case

This comes from the New York Times, a surprising source for such a balanced discussion. Of course as you might surmise from yesterday's post, the Times has been surprising New Yorker's rather often this week. The author is of the opinion that in light of independent audits by companies, such as McDonald's it is unlikely that such abuse is widespread.

Spitzer resigning...maybe

News reports from all over say that the governor of NY, Elliot Sptizer, may resign tomorrow.
Never liked the man. Never, never, never.
When he was attorney general it was clear that he was running for governor, rather than attending to the state's legal business. I used to use Attorney General's office publications for research for the Farm Side. When he took office most of them vanished from publication.
Although he has been a fairly good man as far as helping farmers goes, his policies in relation to almost everything else have appalled me. I was just thinking today as I read Windy Ridge's comment on gun control measures planned for New York under the current administration that the worst thing that has happened to the state in years was George Pataki's appendicitis. That was before I learned about this.
Today is the first time in over thirty years that I heard my dad give his rebel yell (over the phone). I think he is happy about the news.

Dark

It is. Still. The clock says six, but my brain says five. Everyone is asleep except Liz, who already left for her new job/internship and me, who got up early to see her off. We would normally be milking by now, but everybody is tired and cranky from the stupid time change...so I haven't called anyone yet. It isn't tanker day, Liz already checked the springers (cows close to having calves) and the cows won't care because they are still on Eastern Standard time. Let the poor souls, both bovine and human catch an extra half hour. It isn't going to hurt a thing. Liz is talking about sleeping when she comes home between milkings for her midday break and I am going to encourage her to....she is already weary with four months to go.


We sure have a mess of cows due to calve and have already calved four I think. Probably closest is my Crunch cow (her mother's name was Cookie, by a bull named Plushanski Thor Cutter, so how could I not). Crunch nearly died as a two-year old when she got into the manger in the heifer barn and fell down with her head turned under her. We missed her at about dark that day and went in to find a nightmare. She probably weighed 1100 pounds and was wild as an eagle, stuck down and thrashing wildly. During the course of getting her up Liz got dragged around the barn and Alan took a beating too. With some of us pulling her on a rope halter and someone holding her tail to balance her so she could stand we got her on her feet and walked her outside. As soon as we let her go she went right back in and fell again. We made her comfortable and let her stay there. It took weeks of hand carrying water and feed to her and helping her to her feet every day, but the kids, (mostly Becky and Alan doing the hauling) saved her. She is due now for her second calf and bred to Four-of-a-Kind Eland. I am grateful to the all kids for their hard work back then, getting her out and keeping her going. Cookie was my all time favorite cow and I lost her to a clostridial infection and then her only other daughter, Cedar, was electrocuted. I still have Cookie's sister, Eland and her niece, Egrec, but I would really have hated to lose Crunch.


When the whole affair was over, Crunch had a couple of ropey scars on her legs where she cut herself but she was tame. We figure she turned wild as a calf because the anesthetic for having her horns removed didn't work quite right. She was fine and tame up until she was dehorned and got up the next morning hating us all. (We have our veterinarian dehorn the calves; they receive both general and local anesthetic for the operation...horned cattle are dangerous to themselves, their herdmates and us working in close quarters with them as we do.) Now, she is a sweetheart and was top milker on the farm two months last year. I would love to get a heifer calf, but I will settle for getting her through calving in good shape.


Besides Crunch, we have Liz's baby Jersey, Hazel, her old Jersey show cow, that was reserve champion Jersey at the fair, Heather, Egrec, Mento, (both mine) and others I can't think of this early in the morning.... all gearing up to have calves. So far most of them have been calving during the day, which is a nice bonus...hope they continue in that style.


Sorry about rambling, but I am just not quite awake yet.

**Update, the boss just got up and turned on the news to find that the Cumberland Farms store just across the river from us was robbed yesterday. That is too close...just too close.... maybe a mile and two tenths from the bottom of our driveway. And they wonder why we want to stay armed and able to protect ourselves from stuff like that. Since 911 sent vast numbers of folks moving north from the big city, a veritable crime wave has followed right in their footsteps. Used to be mostly in Schenectady and Albany, but now our banks are being robbed and our stores hit right close to home. Dang.

The Time Change

(I could have added an adjective or two in there, but this is a family friendly place.)
We time changed this morning...got up an hour early to milk and the cows looked at us as if we were nuts. They were still lying down in their comfy beds and didn't even want to stand up. They love routine and hate anything that changes it. Last week I was asked in a newsletter how farmers feel about changing time. Anything that disrupts routines disrupts cows and makes things harder....so I don't like changing in either direction. As to why we at Northview don't just ignore the change and stay on the same schedule year round...in a word (or maybe two) the milk truck. He comes at 8 AM. We have to be done by then. If we just stayed on Daylight Savings we would always be done before 8, but meetings and such would just kill us. I do not understand the rationale behind changing and would like to stay on Daylight Savings year around. Sarpy Sam has some good points on the issue today too....oh, I was reading blogs and see that Linda does too.

Yesterday one of Liz's heifers had a little bull calf (which was a disappointment...she really wanted a heifer). Interestingly though, he was red, which proves that his mother is a red carrier, even though she herself is plain black and white. She was sired by the RC bull at Select Sires, Kenyon, but her dam has never had a red calf. When I looked at him trotting around the barn in his little calf coat this morning I wondered aloud, "How many of these do you think are alive in the world today?"

Not because he was red or a bull, but because he is a son of Citation-R Maple, a bull that has been dead for a very long time. It would be interesting to know just how many of them there are today. Not many I'll bet.

Morning off

Saturday isn't Sunday. However, with Liz away most days for her internship the family schedule of mornings off...Saturday for her, the younger fry and me on Sunday (the boss does not desire and will not take one) has been torn asunder. I didn't think we were going to get one at all any more. However, Liz was given this day off from her new job since she has to work a whole, straight week next week because her boss is going away.

Therefore she gave me and her sibs this morning off and she is taking the afternoon milking to catch up on sleep. I am having a happy time, reading everyone's blogs, and saying hello and doing not one single useful work thing. It is great.
Thanks kiddo!!!

Woke up this morning to a cacophonous din of assorted blackbirds in the honey locust. Two days ago I hadn't seen a single RWBB, now there are thousands. Grackles too. Two days ago there was no bird song....just dozy winter twittering (except for the cardinal, which would sing through a blizzard). Now there are house finches caroling their little purple hearts out and gold finches nattering away, plus all the uproar from the blackbirds.



So many geese, all Canada's so far, are winging over that you start to lose count at two hundred or so....per flock.

I guess we can safely say that spring has sprung,,,and although the grass has yet to riz, I sure know where dem boidies is .

*** footnote. I was searching for the well-known short poem about grass and boidies and discovered that there is much controversy over who wrote it. Everyone learned it in school back in the day and it was then attributed to Ogden Nash right there in the text books...However, now it is attributed to many others as well. I wonder......
Here are some great Nash poems, including another on spring.

Rose quartz

As you may have guessed...Becky has no classes today so I get to play on the computer instead of driving all day. Here are some photos of one of my larger pieces of rose quartz. Dad and I collected these perhaps thirty years ago on a mountain up near the Sacandaga Reservoir. They are amazing! This one is roughly 11"x 3 1/2" x 6 1/2 ". (Do click if you have time...)

Pictures of grandma

The boss's late mother and her younger sister. He visited his aunt today and she sent several photos home with him (which we were thrilled to have and will certainly treasue.

They were true farm girls. Grandma Peggy used to cultivate the corn with the old buckskin horse when she was about this small. She always said no one wore shoes in the summer and he was wonderful about not stepping on her feet. When her dad died and the farm was sold she wanted so much to keep the old horse....

This one's for Steve

Every now and then we revisit the barn blackboard to see what is evolving there. Steve was asking so.......




Most of this one was done by Alan...with a little help from me....and the verse was written there by Becky..."The cloud that took the form when the rest of Heaven was blue of a Demon in my view"...her favorite quite from Edgar Allen Poe

SPRING

For a few minutes anyhow. There was a robin proudly proclaiming his presence in the yard by the car this morning. First one for the season here on the farm. There were dozens more of his kin, plus another blue bird, plus probably a hundred red-winged black birds foraging the roadsides on the trip over to the school this morning. Also to be seen was an amazing amount of tree damage from the ice they got night before last. We were lucky and didn't get a single bit, but there were trees and branches down all over on the hilly parts of the trip. Lots of firewood for somebody, but they sure are going to work for it. One family lost about half a giant maple in their front yard....fell right on a bunch of little spruce trees...what a shame.

There was still ice on some plants and trees on the west side of the road. It glittered in today's blazing sunlight like the walls of a Herkimer diamond mine after a rain. It was dramatically lovely, but I couldn't get any pictures because of heavy traffic. I did get a hurried shot of flood water gushing out of a huge culvert though. That particular culvert serves as drainage for the huge beaver swamp where we sometimes get a few plants for the water garden. I have never seen so much water rushing through there and it made me a bit nervous about driving over it. They replaced all the culverts on Corbin Hill last fall and there is a big dip where this one sits. With so much water against it and inside it I worry about it washing out. I will be watching closely on night drives!

Anyhoo....I am going to enjoy as much of this lovely day as I can, after I get the bookkeeping out of the way. ANOTHER storm in the forecast for tomorrow.

Good Iditarod information

The Apple Doesn't Fall Farm From the Tree has several pieces on mushers in the great race that are new to me and very interesting! She has a cousin in the race so she really knows what is happening! She also tells about a woman musher from upstate NY who is in the race as well. Jeff King has been my long time favorite, but I guess I will be rooting for some other folks as well.

As far as I can see leadership in the race is fluctuating faster than I can keep up with it. A lot of earlier leaders are in McGrath. Looks like right now Mitch Seavey is in the lead with Hugh Neff and Zack Steer next in line.

Day two

Got to go milk, but I'll steal a minute. I had to get Becky last night after milking, which meant driving home after nine. There was no traffic, which was fine. A few yards after we got on Corbin Hill Road, there was this tiny, silvery-pewter colored thing standing on the road side. I passed it, but since there wasn't a headlight to be seen for miles, backed up for a better look. Of course I hadn't brought the camera because it was dark out and I didn't think I would see anything, but it sat quite calmly and let us have a goodly look. It was a little silver eastern screech owl. When Becky stepped out her door to make sure it was all right, as it stayed right there, it fluffed into the air like an impossible cotton toy and ghosted silently into the woods. Beautiful!


(I will not leave my camera at home...I will not leave my camera at home...I will not leave my camera at home...)

****Update-today's "reward birds" for my stormy drive over to Coby were a blue bird that flashed across the road right in front of the car down south of 20. He was simply glowing as he pumped the air.... indigo-cobalt, indigo-cobalt like wild blue neon in motion . Then there was a red-bellied woodpecker in a Norway Spruce on a neighbor's farm as I was driving home.

Changes

Liz started her internship working at another farm today. She is home at night to sleep, but gone much of the rest of the time.
It is going to be a long four months, but we will get through it somehow. Becky is going to grain the cows, working from a list Liz set up. I did it this morning, but I really need to stay and help the boss milk the last few cows as there are two strings going at once on opposite sides of the barn and one person has to hustle to keep track of them....so we decided that Beck can do it. Becky also thinks she can learn to milk Liz's string of milkers so when spring's work starts up the men don't have to come in until the end when the Hell cows need to be milked. I have yet to milk Soir and I simply ain't a gonna.


Driving Beck to college stinks. Frankly. It is too far, takes too much time and eats up my breakfast eating time. She has GOT to get her license. Anyhow with the farm one person down and that person being a real key person posting will probably later in the day for a while...might even get a bit sparse. Time will tell I guess. Liz is having a lot of fun anyhow. The folks who are taking her under their wings are about as nice as they come...and come June she will be back to stay I hope

Window on the (bird) World

The view from my Sunday chair

Sunday morning...I get to sit in my Sunday chair and read a Dean Koontz book, which gave me nightmares last night. (You can kill wild pigs with a Swiss Army knife you know...if you always carry one...if three of them have your husband down on the ground savaging him...if only in your dreams.) It is on the opposite side of the house from the bird feeders, but the birds are bringing all the drama of their lives right to me. First a phalanx of pigeons swoops by, blown sideways by the wind. They look anxiously in through the window, all facing me, all unable to fly forward as the wind tosses them around. I hate what they do to the roof of the steeple, but they sure are beautiful fliers.

Then a crow drives a red tailed hawk right past and down to the road, dive bombing his back, bringing him so near I can see the fluffy, white feathers around his tail. It seems strange that the much larger bird is so harried by the smaller, but that is always how it goes. If I were red tail I would just eat crow.

Next two chickadees bounce off the window fighting over a wasp's nest. If I didn't already love chickadees this wasp eating thing of theirs would endear them to me. Our monster huge wooden house is always festooned with all sorts of nests of stinging insects. This time of year the chickadees hunt them out and eat the larvae they contain. (Since Liz is allergic to stings I cheer them on.) In a few minutes one of the combatants is back picking off the next to last nest on the big living room windows. I hope he comes back for the other one.

Dyeing Easter Eggs with Onion Skins

The main ingredients...eggs, dried onion skins, stockings and pieces of plant

Wrap raw egg in stocking with bit of plant arranged snugly against the egg and fasten. You can use rubber bands or tie them like I did.

Next put all the onion skins and wrapped eggs (and plain if you like them that way) in a pot with a tablespoon of white vinegar. Then hard boil the eggs. I brought mine to a boil slowly then simmered for ten minutes and let them cool in the pan. Then I rinsed and dried them and coated them with just a touch of vegetable oil.

My mom happened to call when I was working on these and told me that her grandmother, Julia Lachmayer, used to bring mom and her brothers and sister eggs that had been dyed this way for Easter. It was a new bit of family knowledge for me, as I learned to make these years ago from a magazine article. I like these better than the gaudy, glittery sort that are more usual and start saving onion skins along about Christmas to make them. It is unfortunate that the selection of plant material for decoration is just a tad sparse at this time of year in the Great Northeast though

Summer has come to Northview

If only in our dreams....meanwhile a short photographic reprise of other times, when the world was more welcoming.

This is the day to wish Alan's old show cow, Balsam, Happy Birthday. Balsam is indeed an old cow, but having been born on leap day, she has had very few birthdays. She was just turned dry yesterday and is expecting a calf by Silky Cousteau in a few weeks. (We would all love it if you would hold good thoughts for a heifer.)

It was weird having a leap day calf back in Balsie's show days. March first is the cut off for junior heifer calf so we entered her in Intermediate where she would have competed against all the calves born between December 1 and February 28. She would have had an uphill battle there, as they naturally would have been a lot bigger then she. However, (much to our delight), the show superintendent pointed out that the rule book actually read "Calves born before March 1" and moved her back to junior heifer calf (where in any other year she would have belonged). She went on to win her class for Alan, which is quite a feat as Junior heifer gets a lot of entries. She is retired now, but is a big, sweet, pet and one of my favorites.


****Update, several hours later.....the sad reality of sunrise this morning

Having someone flip your senator for you

Amounts to nothing more than flipping off the voters who elected that senator. It infuriates me to hear about our governor cheerfully going around the state looking for someone willing to betray the folks who elected them by changing parties in return for whatever payback he has to offer.


Sorry if this is confusing to readers outside New York State, but it REALLY gets to me. There is much cheering going on over the upset election of Darrel Aubertine to the state senate, making the Republican majority there easily destroyed by the flipping of just one person. However, I believe that Aubertine was elected because he was the better candidate, pure and simple. I don't think toppling senate leadership had anywhere near as much to do with it as is being claimed (although word is that Spitzer's 2010 election campaign headquarters in NYC ran a phone bank in his behalf).


I heard Aubertine speak at a dairy meeting when he was an assemblyman and I was pretty impressed. He had a decent grasp of rural issues and the realities of farming and seemed sincere about wanting to fix problems. If he ran around here I probably would have voted for him.

However, I have not and certainly never would vote for someone who flipped...even if they flipped to a party I preferred. Let them do it when they are out of office rather than offering voters one position, then choosing another.

And how people can continue to hold our trusty governor, Elliot Spitzer, up as a shining beacon of change when he has spent most of his short tenure in office pulling such tricks, is beyond me. It certainly doesn't say much for the moral climate in state government today.

Laugh until it hurts

HT to Apple for this story of some young gentlemen who found a really, really creative method of getting into some very serious (but hilarious) trouble.

Go
Read
Laugh...you will be glad you did.

Snow for the mushers

The new Cabela's official Iditarod site says that the trail this year is quite snowy so far. (Take a look at the photo of Jeff King's team in 2006...amazing.) I like the new combined site so far. You can find profiles of dogs, blogs about the upcoming race, videos and discussion. I am not sure if they will follow the same format once the race starts, but so far it has been an interesting way to read the pre-race news. The Dennis Ranch offered this link to an article that says that the snow cover isn't just better in Alaska either. Could it be that global cooling looms right around the corner? (Around the corner, heck, see yesterday's hawk picture for the Northview version of global cooling.)

More BSE in Canada

Another case of so called mad cow disease has been found in Alberta. This comes as no surprise as most cases have been discovered there and both governments have predicted there would be more. As far as actually contacting an illness, BSE is not a disease I worry much about. There have still been fewer than 200 known victims world wide. Many things are more dangerous and more likely to happen to us.

The problem is more one of perception because the disease has been hyped all out of proportion to the likelihood of contacting it. What does upset me is that officials seem to ratchet back the numbers every time there is a new case. I have been writing about it since it first appeared and there is always an announcement of lower total numbers then were announced at the beginning. Somebody, somewhere got it wrong.....

Coopers hawk...on bunny watch maybe

What a difference a day makes

***Photo by Liz with her big camera

Tracking the not-a-bunny

We received a truly sunny day yesterday. It felt like a spring sunny day too, not one of those anemic, sun-through-high-clouds with wind-flinging-grainy-snow-in-front-of-it sunny days, (which are about as warming as the light from the refrigerator), but a real icicle stretcher.




It called to me. It has been nearly impossible to walk outdoors around here for at least six weeks. Ice storm after ice storm has conspired to lock the ground down against the intrusion of questing feet. We went where we had to and stayed inside otherwise.

But yesterday, lovely yesterday, the ice was soft, the snow crust would still hold you up and there was a buttering of soft, squashy snow to keep you from slipping. It teased me away from indoor chores for a walk up to the heifer pasture. There were tracks lacing everywhere, melted like wax under a candle, but still clear for the reading. Last night's bunny tracks, edges higher than the track itself from the sun's intense gaze. Skunk or possum tracks noodling down the fence line in search of something only he recognized. Crow tracks, fresh as newly embroidered stitchery, all over the pasture. (Wonder what they were looking for.) The spots of bare ground called the sparrow tribe away from the feeders too...I didn't see a junco all day and only one white-throat.

Next came the tracks of the elusive not-a-bunny. He walked out from the old brown three-bay shed, crossed the page wire fence into the horse yard, then into the horse pasture proper, back to the yard and then off across the heifer pasture. He was clearly on a quest for something, from the looks of his last night tracks, but I have no idea what it might have been. Maybe mice and voles, as I suspect that the not-a-bunny was a midnight red fox.

Then larger tracks of the old, but still impatient, border collie who accompanied me began to blur the text of the last night's travelogue. Reluctantly I returned to my work. Today and tomorrow it is back to the two-storms-a-week pattern that has plagued us for at least a month, but I am still warm around the edges from yesterday's sun. I tried to photograph the pattern of the tracks, but with the blinding light on the snow, all my pictures were pathetic. A squeaking, peeping patch of chickadees obligingly posed to make up the deficiency.

Doug Swingley retires

One of my favorite mushers called it quits this year as far as the Iditarod goes, although he will still continue to raise dogs for the great race and still races in other venues. Swingley blamed his age for not running in the Iditarod any more saying on the official race news site, “I’m just too old to compete at the level I want to compete at,” he said. “It’s an awesome group of dogs, and I don’t have the ability to keep up with them anymore without getting hurt.” He sustained some serious hurting last year and is almost as old as I am so I can't really blame him. As a four time winner he has sure got the tee shirt.

He is also taking up horse endurance racing.

Hooray for robins

(File under "finally".) Seems as if everyone has seen robins but me and I have been feeling kind of left out. Usually making the run down to Cobleskill this time of year will provide one or two, but Liz and I took Becky down to school this morning and didn't see a one on the way in. Then we did a little grocery shopping as this weeks midriff is going to feature yet another winter storm and we were worse than overdue for stocking up. On the way up the mountains back to our colder and more wintry home we saw one...then two...then thirty...then at least a hundred.

Yay robins! That's all I gotta say.

East meets West

Or at least they holler howdy from the living room windows to the dining room windows.

Twins and tough calving

A couple of years ago we had an amazing spring with not one, but three pairs of heifer twins born here. (Guess the nutrition situation was especially good). Twins are not exactly aspired to by cow farmers as it is tough on the cow to carry two and the babies are smaller as a rule and less hardy. It came to me yesterday that this had been proved out by the six born that spring.

The last of the six calved for the first time yesterday and had a terrible time of it. The calf was by the shorthorn bull...we have had very few problems with his babies, but this bull calf was big and FAT! Liz delivered it and it was pretty compromised by the time she had it out. The poor heifer was just exhausted. The boss got a bottle of calcium on board and we got her on her feet, but she just didn't want to stand up and lay right back down. She was eating good though so maybe she will be okay...no way to be sure yet. She has a beautiful udder and is out of an exceptionally good cow so I am hoping.....

Anyhow I realized that only two of those six twin heifer babies are still here at the farm. One was injured kicking the skid steer bucket and although we kept her, she never bred so we beefed her a while ago. Another freshened with no openings in two of her teats...kept her too, but she never bred so she is also gone. Twin Rex daughters from my good cow Eland both were sold to pay taxes because they were absolutely insane and kept attacking the kids and the boss (can't really blame that on twinning but neither of them bred up quickly either). The only ones left here are the one that calved yesterday, Frosting, and her twin who has been fresh a few weeks, Poptart. Neither of them is particularly hardy or tough acting or looking. Guess I would rather get one healthy heifer calf than two not so rugged individuals.